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Legal Cynicism, Collective Efficacy, and the Ecology of Arrest*

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Legal Cynicism, Collective Efficacy, and the Ecology of Arrest* LEGAL CYNICISM, COLLECTIVE EFFICACY, AND THE ECOLOGY OF ARREST* DAVID S. KIRK Department of Sociology University of Texas at Austin MAURI MATSUDA Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice University of Maryland—College Park KEYWORDS: legal cynicism, collective efficacy, arrest, race–ethnic disparities, neighborhood effects Ethnographic evidence reveals that many crimes in poor minority neighborhoods evade criminal justice sanctioning, thus leading to a negative association between the proportion of minority residents in a neighborhood and the arrest rate. To explain this finding, we extend recent theoretical explications of the concept of legal cynicism. Le- gal cynicism refers to a cultural orientation in which the law and the agents of its enforcement are viewed as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety. Crime might flourish in neighborhoods characterized by legal cynicism because individuals who view the law as illegitimate are less likely to comply with it; yet because of legal cynicism, these crimes might go unreported and therefore unsanctioned. This study draws on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods to test the importance of legal cynicism for understanding geographic variation in the probability of arrest. We find that, in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of legal cynicism, crimes are much less likely to lead to an arrest than in neighborhoods where citizens view the police more favorably. Findings also reveal that residents of highly cynical neighborhoods are less likely to engage in * We are grateful to the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighbor- hoods for providing the data necessary to undertake this study. We thank Andy Papachristos for critical feedback on an earlier draft of the manuscript as well as his collaborative work on legal cynicism. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Any findings or conclusions expressed are those solely of the authors. Direct correspondence to David S. Kirk, Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A1700, Austin, TX 78712 (e-mail: [email protected]). C 2011 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/j.1745-9125.2011.00226.x CRIMINOLOGY Volume 49 Number 2 2011 443 444 KIRK & MATSUDA collective efficacy and that collective efficacy mediates the association between legal cynicism and the probability of arrest. Racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, are drasti- cally overrepresented in the U.S. criminal justice system. Although African Americans constitute roughly 13 percent of the total population in the United States, they accounted for 28 percent of arrests in 2008 (U.S. De- partment of Justice, 2009). Against this backdrop, ethnographic evidence reveals that, although many crimes lead to arrest in poor, African American neighborhoods, countless others go undetected and unsanctioned. For in- stance, Venkatesh (2008; see also Venkatesh, 1997) depicted in vivid detail how residents of the Robert Taylor Homes, a recently demolished housing project located on the south side of Chicago, endured the constant presence of drug distribution by gang members in the lobbies of the high-rise build- ings yet did not generally bring these crimes to the attention of the Chicago police. This lack of reporting occurred for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the notorious street gang the Black Kings funneled money and favors back to the community in return for silence. Yet the puzzle still remains; why is the American criminal justice system characterized by such vast racial and ethnic disproportionality when many crimes go unsanctioned in the poorest neighborhoods of the country? We assert that the same factor—legal cynicism—can explain these seem- ingly disparate patterns. Legal cynicism is a cultural frame in which the law and the agents of its enforcement are viewed as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety (Kirk and Papachristos, 2011). We argue that the controlling influence of the law carries little weight when people view the law and its agents negatively. Thus, more crime will occur in neighborhoods characterized by legal cynicism. Yet when residents per- ceive that the police are unresponsive and that calling the police will do little or nothing to resolve the crime problem endemic to their neighborhood, proportionally more crimes will go unreported and unsanctioned than in neighborhoods where the law and the police are viewed more favorably. Drawing on a unique assemblage of individual-, family-, and neighborhood- level data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighbor- hoods, this study aims to test these arguments by disentangling whether and why the frequency of arrest and the probability that a crime leads to arrest vary across neighborhood context. We focus attention on the ways that perceptions of the law and the police influence crime and criminal justice sanctioning. This study proceeds as follows. We begin by describing our conception of legal cynicism and the way cynicism of the law influences criminal behavior and the capacity of the justice system to sanction that behavior. After that, we test our theoretical arguments in a multilevel framework THE ECOLOGY OF ARREST 445 that controls for individual- and family-level determinants of arrest as well as for alternative neighborhood-level explanations. With this design, we attempt to isolate the effect of legal cynicism on arrest from the multitude of confounding factors related to crime and criminal justice sanctioning. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK To explain geographic variation in the use of or capacity for formal social control, scholars often have employed either the minority threat or the benign neglect theses; yet it is debatable whether these macrolevel perspectives fully consider the complex nature of police–community re- lations in the modern metropolis. The minority threat thesis asserts that increases in the proportion of non-Whites in a population will lead to increases in formal social control to neutralize the threat of the expanding population. According to Liska (1992: 165), “the greater the number of acts and people threatening to the interests of the powerful, the greater the level of crime control.” A visible minority population generates perceptions of “threat” to the political and economic superiority as well as to the personal safety of the dominant group (Blalock, 1967; Liska and Chamlin, 1984). Members of the majority then use their access to formal institutions such as the criminal justice system to mitigate the perceived threat through the suppression of minority populations. Empirically, the minority threat thesis predicts that increases in the relative size of the minority population in a given geographic area will lead to increases in police force size and crime- control expenditures as well as to higher arrest rates (Liska, 1992; Stults and Baumer, 2007). In seeming contrast to the minority threat argument, the benign neglect thesis specifies an inverse relationship between the share of the non-White population in an area and the extent of formal social control (Liska and Chamlin, 1984). In this case, the proportion of non-Whites in a population influences the likelihood of arrest through its effect on the racial com- position of victimization. As the minority population grows, the ratio of intraracial to interracial crimes will likely increase. Then, as the relative share of victimizations involving a non-White victim increases, the criminal justice system is less likely to deploy social control in response. The basis for the argument is that non-White citizens are devalued relative to Whites, particularly when it comes to the legal system and the police (Wilson, 1971: 141).1 1. Use of the phrase “benign neglect” in discussions of race relations generally is attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late Harvard sociologist and U.S. Senator, who used the phrase in a memorandum to President Richard M. Nixon in 1970 to suggest that race relations had become so contentious in the United 446 KIRK & MATSUDA Empirical support for the minority threat and the benign neglect theses has been inconsistent, with inferences dependent on the measure of formal social control used as well as on the measures of threat. Generally, studies of the capacity for formal social control (e.g., police force size) provide evidence in support of the minority threat thesis (e.g., Jackson and Carroll, 1981; Kent and Jacobs, 2005; Liska, Lawrence, and Benson, 1981; Stults and Baumer, 2007), whereas investigations of the use of formal social control (e.g., arrest) provide greater support for the benign neglect thesis (Liska and Chamlin, 1984; Parker, Stults, and Rice, 2005; Stolzenberg, D’Alessio, and Eitle, 2004). Even though the benign neglect thesis garners some support for explain- ing arrest, additional dissection is necessary of the specific mechanisms that explain why the use of formal social control is inversely related to the proportion of a minority population in a geographic area. The reason for this negative correlation may be something other than, or in addition to, the overt devaluation of minority victims relative to White victims. In fact, Moskos (2008) noted that a prime way for the police to demonstrate or- ganizational productivity and effectiveness is by amassing arrests. Because police performance is judged through arrests, the police have substantial motivation to make arrests in minority neighborhoods; yet it is still the case that the probability of getting arrested after the commission of a crime is lower in minority neighborhoods. One reason might be that the perception that the police are unresponsive to the needs of minority victims and residents, whether true or not, undermines both formal and informal social control of crime in a neighborhood. Anderson (1999) observed that many residents of disadvantaged areas in Philadelphia are afraid to report crimes for fear that the police, even if they respond to a call for service, might harass them or reveal their identities to the perpetrators of the crime.
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